Arthur A. Higgins, sales manager of the Providence Gas
Company, whose present official title is Superintendent of the
Appliance Department, holds the distinction of having for
twenty-three consecutive years sold gas lighting, gas appliances or
gas. During all this time, with the exception of the first two
years, he has served but two companies.
Born in Somerville, Mass., on August 28, 1874, he started to peddle
gas mantles in 1898. But he had done this but two years when his
ability was recognized by Theodore H. Piser, Boston manager of the
Welsbach Company, who hired him and kept him on the road until 1907.
In March, 1907, Mr. Higgins opened the Providence department of the
Welsbach Company. This is the only purely retail store of the
Welsbach Company and has proved a success.
At about this time the Narragansett Electric Lighting Company was
strengthening its sales department. It had about a half dozen
salesmen devoting all their time to selling electric lighting and
all was going well. The company had no display and salesroom with
the exception of its office on the second floor of an office
building, and on account of the lack of gas competition in lighting
no store was deemed essential.
The arrival of Mr. Higgins in town, however, changed all this. The
electric light salesmen had frequent meetings and began to devote
their best thoughts to ways and means of meeting this competition
that was promised by the well appointed gas light store.
Previous to this time the electric light salesmen had found that
most of the gas lighting competition they were called upon to meet
was that of gas arc salesmen who remained in the city but a few
weeks at most. The Welsbach store changed this and the arrival of
Mr. Higgins resulted in the electric lighting company starting
stores of its own. In short, from the moment that he arrived in
town, the life of the electric light men became far more exciting
than it had ever been before.
On December 1, 1911, he went with the Providence Gas Company as
Superintendent of the Appliance Department, where he has remained
ever since and where he has been making gas selling history. During
nine months before the end of the war he also managed the Welsbach
store in addition to his duties with the gas company.
Mr. Higgins attracted countrywide attention in 1915 when from March
22 to March 27, inclusive, he sold 1370 water heaters through
advertising and without the aid of salesmen, though the total sales
for the previous year had been but 628 water heaters. In two weeks'
time he sold 1865 heaters at an average selling cost of 62.8 cents
per order taken and had only 36 cancellations and 17 removals out of
the whole lot.
The same year he sold 467 ranges in a week, also through
advertising. As a matter of fact the Arthur A. Higgins gas
advertising has proved both unique and effective. Pictures are used
extensively. In some cases the advertisement has been hardly
anything but picture, and Mr. Higgins always has these illustrations
specially drawn for him by an artist who works in accordance with
his ideas.
In March, 1916, he had a window display for water heaters that it
cost $200 to make. It was entitled "Providence Hot Springs," and
consisted of a fountain of hot water, the basin of which was
surrounded by a garden of real flowers, and this by a miniature lawn
made with turf raised in a hothouse.
Such accomplishments as these won recognition for Mr. Higgins in
unlooked for fields. In the financial column of the April 17, 1916,
issue of the Providence Journal, a paper not given to using any
material that gives any unmerited publicity to anyone, there
appeared an article on local securities in which the work of Mr.
Higgins was given credit for having a stabilizing effect upon the
securities of the Providence Gas Company.
In February, 1920, Mr. Higgins read a paper on Advertising before
the New England Association Gas Engineers. This paper was so well
prepared that it was reprinted by Printers' Ink, a journal that
prides itself upon printing only the very best material upon the
subject of advertising, and it was also quoted by the Boston
Transcript, the Providence Journal, the Providence Tribune, and
various other papers. Mr. Higgins has not a complete list of the
newspapers which made mention of it, because being too modest to
believe that it would attract nationwide attention, he did not
subscribe to a press clipping bureau. As a matter of fact, however,
few if any papers ever read at a gathering of gas men have attracted
such widespread attention outside of the industry as did this paper.
The conditions brought about by the war have made it necessary that
the good will and the confidence of the business men in the
community served by the gas company be won if the road over which it
must travel during the coming years is to be made as smooth as
possible. Mr. Higgins has been quick to recognize this fact and has
been directing his energies in this direction. One method that he
has used has proved effective.
The three leading business men's associations of Providence are the
Town Criers, the advertising club, the Rotary Club and the Kiwanis
Club. It is probably safe to say that these three clubs between them
include among their membership the great majority of the leading
business men of the city.
Mr. Higgins extended to each of these clubs invitations to visit the
gas plant in a body. The Town Criers went first, more than ninety
members visiting the plant, which they inspected thoroughly, and in
doing so created an excellent appetite which was appeased by an
excellent dinner served in the plant restaurant. This excursion was
followed by similar ones by the members of the other two clubs
mentioned. All the detail of getting up enthusiasm among the members
and getting these men to give up a day to see the plant was handled
by committees of club members. Mr. Higgins simply fired the
enthusiasm of the members of these committees and they did the rest.
Mr. Higgins is now vice-chairman of the Advertising Section of the
American Gas Association. About five years ago he served as
president of the New England Association of Gas Managers, and during
the war he served a year as chairman of the membership committee of
the Chamber of Commerce of Providence. He has also been elected to
the council of the Town Criers of Rhode Island. This council is hand
picked from the advertising men of the city.
Mr. Higgins is not only a familiar figure at all gas conventions,
but Mrs. Higgins also accompanies him. It is quite possible that she
holds the lady's championship for convention attendance. His two
sons have not yet announced their intention of being gas men, but
one of them has already shown considerable talent as an
advertisement illustrator for a youngster of his age.

Source: Fibre & fabric: a record of American textile industries. Volume 18 -
August 1893
Mr. John Higgins died at Washington Village, R.I., Dec. 12th,(1893), aged
85. Mr. Higgins was born in Manton, R.I. When 11 years old he removed to
Pawtucket, where he entered a mill and gradually worked his way upwards. From
Pawtucket he went to the Crompton mills, where he worked for some years and then
removed to Wilkinsonville, Mass., laboring there five years. He returned to
Crompton and soon after became superintendent of the Union mills at East
Greenwich, and a short time afterward ran the mill in his own name, owing to
financial difficulties of the owners.

In 1852 he removed to Woonsocket and assumed charge of the Globe mill as
superintendent. He remained here some years and went to Sutton, Mass., where he
operated a cotton mill for five years.

From Sutton he went to North Webster, where he served as superintendent of the
Slater & Sons' mill, where he remained about two years. He then went to Enfield
and East Greenwich, superintending mills.

In company with two Providence capitalists he purchased the Jackson mill
property near Hope, but soon retired from the firm, and on his return to
Washington Village he, with a Mr. Tisdale of Wickford, purchased the mill there,
and continued in the business until the structure was burned, when he gave up
active business.

From the age of 11 he was constantly connected with cotton manufacturing
enterprises and was accounted a successful manufacturer.

He leaves a son and daughter, the former being J. H. Higgins of the firm
of J. H. Higgins & Co., loom harness manufacturers of Woonsocket, and the latter
Mrs. Mary L. Chase, wife of Levi L. Chase, of Rakeville, South
Bellingham, Mass.

Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves on New Year's Day 1863 and they
thanked him by joining his Grand Old Party. In Providence, Bertha
Grant DeLard Higgins was the toast of that party.

"As Fred Douglass has well said," she wrote in a 1920 letter urging
black women voters to register as Republicans, "the Republican party
is the ship for the Negroes, all else is sea."

Born in Danville, Va., in 1872, Higgins once worked as a dressmaker.
But her real genius was for manipulating the social fabric. She
plunged waist-deep into every important civil rights cause of the
early 20th century, from the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill to woman's
suffrage.

In politics, Higgins found her calling. Her personal papers at the
Rhode Island Black Heritage Society bulge with handbills announcing
political gatherings and newspaper clippings of controversies long
forgotten.

The tattered Christmas cards and thank-you notes from Rhode
Islanders politically prominent enough then to have their names
emblazoned on public buildings today secure her place as a foot
soldier in their campaigns.

But in church basements and living rooms, Bertha Higgins was much
more of a general, commanding the loyalties of legions of black
voters.

"Very forward," was one acquaintance's none-too-complimentary
assessment of Higgins's character.

Yet that very quality made her an effective organizer and leader.
She married physician William Harvey Higgins in 1896 and the
couple moved northward to Providence in 1903, where they lavished
effort on social change.

For a quarter of a century, Bertha Higgins created and led political
and social clubs. She was president of the Woman's League of the
Douglas Republican Association, the woman's Auxilliary to the
Charles Summer Club and Guardian of the young women's 20th Century
Arts and Literature Group. She was an incorporator of the Rhode
Island League of Women Voters, founder of the Julia Ward Howe
Republican Women's Club and the Colored Woman's Non-Partisan
Politican and Civic League.

She claimed her place in the big picture, but she kept one eye fixed
on the details: jobs. She was relentless in her efforts to peel back
the color barriers to employment.

She did not hesitate to remind the white politicians she had helped
elect of the consequences of shortchanging her people. When Higgins
took up her pen, the wise course would be to grant her request
immediately.

"His grandmother is a member of the organization and they reside in
Ward 3, which is quite thickly populated with our voters . . ."

"I dislike to burden you with a letter of this kind. Still, I would
like to know what I am to look forward to in this coming campaign .
. ."

Young Allen K. Robinson was one beneficiary of one of Higgins's
postal onslaughts. In a 15-day span, 17 letters flew back and forth
from Higgins to Sen. Theodore Green, Congressman Aime J. Forand, and
Thomas Bride Jr., then the state's head of the federal civil
service. Robinson became Bride's newest Junior Interviewer.

She worked just as hard for her husband, writing letters for two
years to get him a part-time postal clerk's job. She similarly
launched the career of her only child Prudence, who became the
state's first black social worker in 1937.

The powers that be knew Mrs. Higgins's thinly veiled threats to be
more than idle.

Fred Williamson, now the director of the state's Historical
Preservation Commission, was a boy in the 1930s when his uncle
hauled him by streetcar from East Providence to the Winter Street
AME Church for a political meeting.

Higgins was the afternoon's sensation when she announced her
intention to abandon the Republican party.

"She was so closely identified with the Republicans, to have her
testify for the Democrats was devastating," recalls Williamson. "But
when the afternoon was over, she converted everyone present, more or
less."

Higgins died in 1944, at age 72. It would be another decade before
the civil rights movement's confrontational turn made Higgins's
letters look genteel.

But it takes no great effort to imagine Bertha Higgins's shouldering
her way to front ranks of those long marches to freedom.

01/18/08http://www.obitservices.com/obits.php?ID=7461
Melvin V Higgins, Sr. -- Warwick (R.I.)Melvin V. Higgins, Sr. 80 of Warwick died Wednesday at
Rhode Island Hospital, Providence. He was the beloved
husband of Bernice ( Sutherland ) Higgins.
Born in Providence a son of the late Clifton L. and
Mildred F. (Battey) Higgins, Melvin served in the US
Army during WWII, joining the US Navy to serve during
the Korean War and then joined the Air Force reserves
transferring to the Rhode Island Air National Guard
retiring in 1985 as a Master Sergeant. He was the
recipient of the Meritorious Service Award and Air
Force Commendation Medal in 1985. Melvin was a Foreman
at Quonset Point for 29 years until its closure in
1973 and had worked for Walt’s Roast Beef, Morris and
Brooms, Gtech and A & H Manufacturing.
Mr. Higgins was a member of William Shields Post #43
Warwick, a Past Master of Corinthian Lodge, now
affiliated with Thomas Smith Webb Lodge # 43 F.& A.M.,
was the oldest living Past High Priest of Providence
Royal Arch Chapter # 1 and had been a member of
Calvary Commandery Knight Templar #13.
Besides his wife Bernice he is survived by three
daughters Deborah A. Porter and her husband James
Porter of Warwick, Beverly D. Higgins of Warwick,
Bonnie Teague and her husband Francis Teague of
Warwick, three sons Gordon D. Higgins and his wife
Deborah Higgins of Warwick, Melvin V. Higgins, Jr. and
his wife Joann Higgins of Warwick, Scott S. Higgins
and his wife Joann L. Higgins of Warwick. His brother
Donald P. Higgins of Cranston, sister Rilma F.
Summerer of Warwick, 15 Grandchildren and 12 Great
Grandchildren. He was the brother of the late Roland
L. Higgins.
Funeral service will be Tue. at 9 am at
Carpenter-Jenks Funeral Home, 659 East Greenwich
Avenue, West Warwick. A Masonic Memorial service will
be Monday evening at 7:30 pm by Thomas Smith Webb
Lodge # 43 F. & A. M. at the funeral Home. Calling
hours Mon. from 4-8pm. Burial with military honors
will be at the Rhode Island Veterans Memorial
Cemetery, Exeter. In lieu of flowers gifts to Leukemia
Society 1150 Pontiac Ave. Cranston, RI 02920 or
Charity the of your Choice. Information and
condolences at
www.carpenterjenks.com.

-U.S. World War II Army Enlistment Records-
Name Birth Year Nativity State or Country Enlistment
Date State Enlistment State
Melvin V Higgins 1927 Rhode Island 7 Mar 1946 Rhode
Island Massachusetts

ABNER HIGGINS is listed in 1890 Veterans Census
Rhode Island Providence East Providence for his
Civil War serviceAppears on 1890 Veterans Census
Schedule East Providence, Providence, Rhode Island. Refers to
his service in 1st Massachusetts Heavy Artillery.

George Bernard Higgins, 75, of 80 Pocasset Ave.,
Tiverton, died Monday, July 26, 2004, at St. Anne's
Hospital, Fall River. He was the husband of Alice (Moniz) Higgins to whom he had been married for 53
years.

Born in Fall River, a son of the late Francis and Rose (DeMoura) Higgins, he had lived in Tiverton for 40
years.

Mr. Higgins had been a manager at Adams Drug Store and
at J.J. Newbury's, in Providence, before retiring.

An Army veteran of the Korean War, and a Purple Heart
recipient, he was a member of the Veterans of Foreign
Wars, Pvt. Woodrow Silvia Post 5392, in Tiverton.

Mr. Higgins was a communicant of St. Christopher Church.

Besides his wife, he leaves a son, Stephen Higgins of
Swansea; a brother, Francis Higgins in New Jersey; and
two grandchildren. He was a brother of the late Thomas Higgins.

Ira E. Higgins Biography(Source-The History of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations,
Biographical section, Page 435)
...
This branch of the Higgins family originally settled on Cape Cod
Massachusetts. While Vermont was still a colony, a branch settled there,
and from the pioneer sprang the branch of which Ira E. Higgins, of Howard
R.I. is a representative.
The name Higgins is an ancient and honorable one in Rhode Island. It having been borne by a
governor of the state and by many men of mark. Ira E. Higgins is a grandson of
Edson Higgins, born in Vermont, a Cape Cod farmer, who reared a
family, one of his children, a son, Samuel
B. Higgins, father of Ira E. Higgins. Samuel B. Higgins was a Vermont
farmer, highly respected in his community as a man of upright, honorable
life. He married Charlotte Lyndon, born in Dublin, Ireland.

Ira E. Higgins, son of Samuel B. and Charlotte (Lyndon) Higgins ,was born at the near
Brookline, Vermont, in 1874, and there grew to manhood. He was educated in a district
school and Leland & Grey Academy, of Townsend , Vermont. His
business, farming from his youth. In 1899 he came to Rhode Island, where he obtained a position at the State Farm at
Howard, as Overseer, under Mr. Eastman, who promoted Mr. Higgins to a position in the
office with himself and together the two men worked in great harmony for the good of the institution until
Mr. Eastman's death in 1907. James McCusker, acting superintendent
for two years. succeeded Mr. Eastman, and he in turn gave way to Dr. Jewitt,
all three men retaining Mr. Higgins as their assistant. On December 30,
1916,Mr. Higgins was appointed superintendent of the State Farm and on January
1,1917, given
full command where heretofore he had been a subordinate. He has made improvements in method
since taking charge and is gradually bringing the farm to a basis which will render it self
sustaining. He is an expert in agriculture, eminately qualified for the position he
fills, and in addition possesses strong administration ability. In 1919 he collected $1000. more per month
that the previous year on products, showing now within $3000. of the total maintenance for the
past nine months. He is a member of the Masonic Order, and in politics a Republican.